VN Ren'Py Nothing Is Forever [v0.7.3] [MrSilverLust]

[MrSilverLust]

Looking at the skill tree. Do we really be able to play out all the kinks we see there?
Or are they more for flavor, like a skill tree in an RPG. Where some skills never gonna be used in game?

Yes of course. Some more hardcore skills will only be used in the late game and will have less scenes than the basic ones, but all of them will be used.

Being sensitive(cat) means you are a sub. It has to go somewhere I knew, but it is very simplistic.
I go for the Eagle then. Guess the caring Dom route is in the role-play section. (Sorry, but I am a little bit too excited now.)

Yeah, trying to fit everything in just 4 categories is reductive. But, the way I’m planning things, by the end of the game, there will be enough sensitive/manly points to get all manly skills and like 4 or 5 from the sensitive tree, or vice versa. Same for honor/cunning. The points are very generous, you shouldn’t be afraid to pick choices from all categories. You might even be punished if you don’t do so, by losing some scenes that required, for example, an honor skill, while are swimming in cunning points and don’t have any use for them because you might even have already bought all skills (this is still some chapters down the line, but you can see by the end how many points you have got and do the math on how many points you will get after X chapters).

The Amount of playtime was very good as well. And you have actual gameplay. We're a lot of thought gone into.
Well done.
For future Patreon, how much time do you plan to need from update to update?

An update of this size took me a bit more than 3 months, but I spent some time remastering chapter 1 and figuring out the code for the android port.

But I think the next updates will be around 3 months each. As more alternative paths are included in the game, it will take longer to develop chapters that contain similar playtimes as of now, for each individual path. Either that, or the updates will feel shorter because there are more routes/content that you’re not seeing in each update. I’m not yet sure how I will juggle that, maybe a bit of both options. Either way, it will keep being around 3 months for each update or more. Some people told me that it is a reasonable amount of time for this amount of content, others didn't like and unsubscribed from my Patreon.

You can also just support me on itch.io in the months that I release an update, if you like. I actually made a similar amout of profit there, in October, as I did on Patreon. It seems that more and more players prefer that route instead of paying per month. Or it is just a coincidence, who knows. I give everyone both options and I'm happy either way.

I had this bug too. I tried it again and again. Until it somehow works. I could only guess, but I think this bug is tied together with a specific sequence. For me it was trial and error. It worked eventually, but I don't know why.

I’ve played around a bit with it and I think I’ve made some coding mistake in the “how does Carl react around her” section, because that seems to be causing some problems for me. But most players don’t report problems. I’ll look deeper into this.

For now, anyone facing this issue, can use the mouse wheel to go back, start anew, and put all of the hints in the correct place the first time, and it should work. Sorry about that.

 

[Silver]

Really amazing game. It has plenty of content as well. I like the Deb's scene as it's done really well. The dom route is a kind of funny. How the Deb's bf is sitting on the couch, and wants deb to ride MC, but she ended up getting mad at the end. lol. Another interesting thing is, here the black guy is getting cucked not the white guy as in other games. I like the skill tree as well, as it gives a RPG vibe. I can say for sure this is one of the best games in this site.

 

[Enot1964]

It's good game and good update. Mrsilverlust, thank you fo your work!

 

[Mister_M]

Regarding the whole hint system, I’m happy to share my (loooong) thought process and then you guys can also give me some feedback.

The hint system went through a few iterations before being what it is now. There was a time where the hints where hidden in the text, and you’d had to mouse hover it to see it was a hyperlink (it would get the typical underline indicating that is clickable, but only when hovered), click on it, and then you’d get the hint. Since the text where a given hint was hidden is kind of arbitrary (you coud argue that many other things that the LIs say could be hints instead of the text I chose), this would lead to a gameplay where you had to check every single line of dialogue before moving forward or risk missing hints. I quickly scraped that idea.

Then I came to this system where the hints pop-up automatically. To make it more challenging I thought about hiding hints behind some choices. However, I thought this would still be a bit arbitrary and the player has no way of knowing what the "correct" choice is to pick it.

Finally, I also considered to "hide" the hints behind some free-roam sections where you have to go through all places to get them, or be at the right time in the right location, or just exhaust all options with a girl. Firstly, I don't enjoy to play or code big sandbox sections. Secondly, it is still arbitrary if I put the hind behind an event that only triggers if you go meet the girl at 11:00 at the beach, on Thursday night. How is the player supposed to know that, besides trial and error?

So, imagine the following scenario. You are on chapter 5. Your favorite girl is ready to indulge in one of your favorite kinks. Say anal sex, or footjob, or oral sex under table, or whatever. You go to the "guess the kink" screen and find out you can't get this scene because you are missing one hint. You have no idea where this hint is. For all you know could be behind a choice you didn't pick on chapter 1.

You have a few options now:

-start a new game, try to pick some different choices to see if you find your missing hint, play through 6h of content until you get to the same place and risk still missing that scene that has your favorite kink ever.

-say “fuck this stupid game, how am I supposed to read the developer's mind and know what choice to pick, or that I had to go to the pub at 11.00pm on Thursday night to meet the girl there and get my hint”, and delete the game from your HD.

-pick up a walk-through online and blindly do what it tells you to do.

I really wanted to avoid these 3 scenarios so we got the “on-rails system” we have now. The thing is, in a point-and-click detective adventure game, if you miss a hint, you can go back to the crime scene, or to interrogate a suspect, to get the missing hints. In a visual novel you can't go back. If you miss a hint, you need to reload an old game/start a new game to get it.

You might then say it's a useless, gimmick system that doesn't add anything to the game. And you might be right.

In my opinion, the "hints" plus the "guess the hint menu" systems as they are now still do a few subtle jobs:

- flavor and character development: you understand why a certain girl likes what she does. Get a look into her psyche; also, you feel like a smart sexologist that can understand the people around you through only the subtext, and you kind of have to actually work a bit for it. It might have seemed easy for you, but a few people ask for the right answers. Altogether, it gives another reason for why the girls could fall for you. You "get" them as no one ever did before. They don’t even have to speak for you to know what they want. It's not just your big dick that makes them weak in the knees

- helps you plan your choices in advance. Say you're really interested in a girl and there's a hint indicting she might like bondage. You don't have enough honorable points for that skill, but start making more of those choices around her to make her trust you more so when the scene comes you can get the bondage skill and she trusts you enough to accept being tied up and at your mercy for some sexy times; or, you are really into bondage, have all the points needed for the skill, but don't know which girl likes it. A hint tells you which one might be, so you start developing your relationship with her more instead of ignoring her route.

This doesn't mean I don't have other ideas to spicy this system up. There is more that can be done with this and the next updates will bring more twists to the formula. But I really want to avoid frustrating experiences like the ones described above. It needs to be on-rails, or, at least, you need to know exactly what was done wrong so you can easily reload an old game. And even this already seems too frustrating to play if you happen to miss a hint, and borderline bad game design.

Anyway, that was just my thought process. I don't know if I came to the "right" system and there might be ways to improve it and I'm always thinking about ways to tweak the game systems to keep them "fresh" and interesting.

I wasn't thinking about it that much (obviously ) and I'm not saying your idea is bad or anything, after all I'm a big fan of your game.

What I was thinking was maybe not having clear hint system, but the player - kind of like in the older adventure games - needs to pay attention to what the various characters say and then - during the puzzle - choose the right answers based on the dialogues and nothing else. To make it easier (since the time between updates and the lenght of the game itself would be too big of an obstacle to remember everything) all the dialogues or important parts of the dialogues could be stored in the journal of some kind and the player could look at it and think by oneself about the kinks, frustration, hopes, etc. of NPC the puzzle is about. When the 1st kink puzzle appeared I first noticed various answers and for a brief moment I thought that few hints are false and few are correct, but it turned out I just have to put them in the right order. The false hints could be used together with the "dialogue reading" system so the player wouldn't have to type the answers on the keyboard (not that I personally would mind).

I know it could all be too frustrating for many, but as I said I'm writing it from only my perspective only and I don't try to force any decision on you. On the contrary, I find your approach interesting and fun, it's just personally I found it too easy. I know it's a AVN so the puzzles are not the main dish here and having too difficult puzzles could lead to breaks of the flow of the game, but I just like puzzles, logical or otherwise, in games .

 

[Frosty2000]

I wasn't thinking about it that much (obviously ) and I'm not saying your idea is bad or anything, after all I'm a big fan of your game.

What I was thinking was maybe not having clear hint system, but the player - kind of like in the older adventure games - needs to pay attention to what the various characters say and then - during the puzzle - choose the right answers based on the dialogues and nothing else. To make it easier (since the time between updates and the lenght of the game itself would be too big of an obstacle to remember everything) all the dialogues or important parts of the dialogues could be stored in the journal of some kind and the player could look at it and think by oneself about the kinks, frustration, hopes, etc. of NPC the puzzle is about. When the 1st kink puzzle appeared I first noticed various answers and for a brief moment I thought that few hints are false and few are correct, but it turned out I just have to put them in the right order. The false hints could be used together with the "dialogue reading" system so the player wouldn't have to type the answers on the keyboard (not that I personally would mind).

I know it could all be too frustrating for many, but as I said I'm writing it from only my perspective only and I don't try to force any decision on you. On the contrary, I find your approach interesting and fun, it's just personally I found it too easy. I know it's a AVN so the puzzles are not the main dish here and having too difficult puzzles could lead to breaks of the flow of the game, but I just like puzzles, logical or otherwise, in games .

Well I agree with MrSilverLust's thought process, that the vast amount of players wouldn't really want a too complicated mini game and it would add to much frustration for too many. Nevertheless the idea to also add some wrong, or lets say misleading clues, sound very good to me and shouldn't be too hard for players who pay attention.

 

[Alpha Beta Omega]

I can't move forward !!!

 

[J. Valentine]

I can't move forward !!!

 

[DonbaOz]

Another excellent update, I really like the characters and the slow burn narrative.
My only issue with this episode is that in one of the text message with Lea, the MC seems too flirtatious toward her and player can't do anything to tone it down.
I know you can turn her down later, but it's just kinda jarring that MC suddenly start hitting on a student without player input.
It break the immersion for me a little bit, especially since we can keep thing strictly professional with Jen, but maybe that's just me.
Still, a great episode, can't wait to read the next one.

(also there's not enough Emma, but I know that it's for narrative reason.)

 

[Mortarion]

What have i done wrong? I have solved her riddle and revealed her kink, she even talks about it how it was in the following interview. But somehow her kink is not shown.

 

[Alpha Beta Omega]

View attachment 1479129

ah i see where i messed up..... !!

I didn't have 'submissive' skills............... :/

though i never do use submission for the MC. x.x

 

[MrSilverLust]

What have i done wrong? I have solved her riddle and revealed her kink, she even talks about it how it was in the following interview. But somehow her kink is not shown.

You haven't done anything wrong, that's how it's supposed to be, although I can see your confusion.

In that screen, under the KINKS header, the game shows some icons, not when you find a kink of a girl, but when you experience a kink with her. For example, in the 1st chapter for Emma, you also don't get any icon in her menu once you solve her riddle. You get a icon once her sex scene ends. Besides, depending on your choice, you get an icon that says something like her kink is being manhandled during a hatefuck, or one that says her kink is being in charge during a hatefuck.

Similar, with Lea you don't get any info there once you solve her riddle, but you'll get once you have some lewd scenes with her. And the icons are more specific. It won't say her kink is exhibitionism, but rather one icon might say "having sex in public", another "go topless to the beach", another "flash a stranger", or whatever.

Basically, I wanted that screen to be an informative pannel where players could easily see in this particular playthrough, what choices they had make, what lewd scenes they had seen, and in which path they were with a given girl.

It was not meant to show the solutions for the riddles.

When I'm alone in my porn cave making the game, everything makes sense. When other people start to play the game, I realise that some stuff can be interpreted in different ways and that things aren't as clear as I thought they would be.

 

[MrSilverLust]

ah i see where i messed up..... !!

I didn't have 'submissive' skills............... :/

though i never do use submission for the MC. x.x

You still need to be able to solve the riddle and move along, regardless of your choices. Are you stuck there? There seems to be a bug there that shows up to some players. Try to correctly put all the answers on the respective spot like is shown on that image on the first try and the kink found button will show up.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to look at the code to see where/if I messed things up.

 

[MrSilverLust]

My only issue with this episode is that in one of the text message with Lea, the MC seems too flirtatious toward her and player can't do anything to tone it down.
I know you can turn her down later, but it's just kinda jarring that MC suddenly start hitting on a student without player input.
It break the immersion for me a little bit, especially since we can keep thing strictly professional with Jen, but maybe that's just me.

Yeah, sometimes this kind of issue comes up. Elsewhere, I also had another player say that he got really pissed of with Emma after she said she didn't want to talk with the MC ever again, and he didn't want to forgive her, so the ending of the episode felt "wrong" to him. Or someone saying that he would have liked the option to not smoke weed because he doesn't like such things.

In the end, there will always be these restrictions in these kind of VNs. I can't code all possible outcomes to accommodate everyone's wishes. I also have my own blind spots. For example, I didn't see anything ethically wrong with MC's behaviour with Lea since he isn't a professor in her university, or her boss. He's just a coworker. I also found the message exchange fun and hot. I missed to take into account that other people will have different opinions about that and won't find some scenes as fun as I did. And that can break the immersion for them.

But it is mostly a practical reason. It gets very complex the more branches I make and the more scenes I allow to skip. Because then all the following scenes need to have several conversation versions dependently on you have previously been flirty, or professional, or skipped a scene, or went until the end, or... you get the point.

Unfortunately, sooner or later, this kind of stuff is bound to happen to everyone.

 

[Call of Booty]

View attachment 1479268

What have i done wrong? I have solved her riddle and revealed her kink, she even talks about it how it was in the following interview. But somehow her kink is not shown.

Did you grope her in park?

 

[Call of Booty]

Yeah, sometimes this kind of issue comes up. Elsewhere, I also had another player say that he got really pissed of with Emma after she said she didn't want to talk with the MC ever again, and he didn't want to forgive her, so the ending of the episode felt "wrong" to him. Or someone saying that he would have liked the option to not smoke weed because he doesn't like such things.

In the end, there will always be these restrictions in these kind of VNs. I can't code all possible outcomes to accommodate everyone's wishes. I also have my own blind spots. For example, I didn't see anything ethically wrong with MC's behaviour with Lea since he isn't a professor in her university, or her boss. He's just a coworker. I also found the message exchange fun and hot. I missed to take into account that other people will have different opinions about that and won't find some scenes as fun as I did. And that can break the immersion for them.

But it is mostly a practical reason. It gets very complex the more branches I make and the more scenes I allow to skip. Because then all the following scenes need to have several conversation versions dependently on you have previously been flirty, or professional, or skipped a scene, or went until the end, or... you get the point.

Unfortunately, sooner or later, this kind of stuff is bound to happen to everyone.

It's your story, bro. And the damn good one. Nobody ever will be able to satisfy all our fetishes,desires how we like 'perfect' VN to be,so don't beat yoursef up and work hard for chapter 3,lol. Keep up the good work,bro

 

[erc9]

I have that same problem, there is a problem in that kink finding riddle . I had the same problem with Emma and then Deb .I cant even progress with that deb cuz there is a bug . And in Emma even though I found the riddle I cant make her stop cuz it says you dont have the kink

 

[Mortarion]

Did you grope her in park?

Not that i could remember, last tim i played was the leak of 1.0...

Similar, with Lea you don't get any info there once you solve her riddle, but you'll get once you have some lewd scenes with her. And the icons are more specific. It won't say her kink is exhibitionism, but rather one icon might say "having sex in public", another "go topless to the beach", another "flash a stranger", or whatever.

Basically, I wanted that screen to be an informative pannel where players could easily see in this particular playthrough, what choices they had make, what lewd scenes they had seen, and in which path they were with a given girl.

It was not meant to show the solutions for the riddles.

I have solved Lea's riddle and got the message that I have found a kink. however, the kink is only displayed in my profile when I have had h-scenes - in whatever form - with her. Did I understand that correctly?

It was clear to me that the profiles were not intended to solve the riddles. To be honest, so far i have found the three(?) puzzles to solve very easy (i'm just at the weed session of the game, and woke up from the trip), at least if you think even a little bit about the character involved.

 

[MrSilverLust]

Not that i could remember, last tim i played was the leak of 1.0...




I have solved Lea's riddle and got the message that I have found a kink. however, the kink is only displayed in my profile when I have had h-scenes - in whatever form - with her. Did I understand that correctly?

It was clear to me that the profiles were not intended to solve the riddles. To be honest, so far i have found the three(?) puzzles to solve very easy (i'm just at the weed session of the game, and woke up from the trip), at least if you think even a little bit about the character involved.

Exactly, that's all correct. Everything is working as intended, no bugs for you, just a little confusion due to how I labelled certain things.

You'll get your kink icon soon enough after the weed session.

 

[xav66ier]

Compressed version, please.
Thanks.

 

[MrSilverLust]

I have that same problem, there is a problem in that kink finding riddle . I had the same problem with Emma and then Deb .I cant even progress with that deb cuz there is a bug . And in Emma even though I found the riddle I cant make her stop cuz it says you dont have the kink

It’s the first time I see anything like that with the Emma kink. I’ll have to have a closer look.
For now, try this:

For now, anyone facing this issue, you can use the mouse wheel to go back, start anew, and put all of the hints in the correct place the first time, and it should work. Sorry about that.

If you do it like that it will work, as you can see by the many players that got that working for them. But I do see that there seems to be something wrong there, especially if you spend some time trying and moving things around.